The special relationship may have its ups and downs, but it seems there is one
thing for which Americans will always give Britain credit: good television.

Downton Abbey enters the Emmy Awards, TV’s equivalent of the Oscars,
with 16 nominations. Arguably, it hardly matters how the evening unfolded,
because in the US, Downton is already lording it.

While British critics have sometimes derided its soapy underpinnings, their
American cousins have approached the series with the reverence of a good
footman. When the San Francisco Chronicle called it “overblown fluff”